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Post by airc777 on Nov 23, 2018 17:24:35 GMT
In case somebody else has tested these already and they can save me a day of making forty variants of the same ship to be shot at by needle railguns and nuclear missiles.
What's the viability of just using Osmium crew modules and not worrying about having a multiple centimeters thick spalling liner? In general, but more specifically I'm having trouble stopping more then one or two glancing needles and this is my latest plan.
What's the viability of sub dividing the length of a ship with several one centimeter thick boron filament radiation shield bulkheads? Currently one contact detonation range nuke will ventilate the nearest fuel tank in my target ship, which in turn appears to have a 50% chance of either doing nothing or ventilating the rest of the ship.
Edit: Ok, I don't entirely understand my own first batch of armor test data. Every once in a while 1cm of Osmium over only the frontal cone and a 2cm Osmium thick crew module is plenty to stop ten of the Apophys 1 GW needle guns by just sitting in front of the enemy fire until the enemy is disarmed. Most of the time 24 cm of osmium total of armor and bulkhead and bulkhead and bulkhead and bulkhead and bulkhead and crew module just isn't enough. Strangely the micron thin vanadium chromium steel fuel tanks placed radially around the crew module are almost always fine.
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Post by airc777 on Nov 23, 2018 23:55:37 GMT
Never mind I'm stupid. Vanadium chromium steel fixes all the things, mostly. Thinner armor preforming better sometimes was due to the lighter craft dodging in spite of having nose forward orders. Spalling bulkheads are of dubious effectiveness, but armored crew modules survive contact nuke flashes and fuel tank ventilation. Currently researching denser propellants and kinetic resistant turret armor. Osmium momentum wheel to minimize turret size and VCS armor is showing promise.
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Post by doctorsquared on Nov 24, 2018 0:41:34 GMT
Part of it is that an angled plate of armor (optimally at a 45°) will grant you better effective armor thickness with a thinner plate than a thicker one at 90°. So while spalling bulkheads do help deal with shrapnel they're less effective against penetrating shots. My current armoring scheme has a 25m spacer mounted in front of the crew module at the front of the ship. This allows for a long nosecone that gives an effective angle that will cause the majority of shots to ricochet without outright damaging the armor. - 1mm of magnesium Magnesium is lightweight enough for an outer layer and dense enough to break up high-velocity low mass projectiles.
- 1m of graphite aerogel. Low mass projectiles that hit the outer layer will turn to plasma due to friction, the aerogel will catch it and 1m thick is enough to contain it.
- 1mm of vanadium chromium steel as an innermost layer that covers the inside of the nosecone and the flanks of the crew module. Shattered projectiles that punch through the first two layers will have lost enough momentum to be stopped by VCS' superior mechanical strength.
Key things to remember:
Armor
- Keep the nosecone pointed towards the enemy (preferably with the nose forward command)
- Having a smaller cross-section makes you more difficult to hit in the first place.
- Shots above 25g at high enough velocity will go through if they don't ricochet due to the extreme angle of the armor.
- Avoid getting flanked, even the cylindrical sides of the standard shaped armor won't be enough to protect you for long.
- Polyethylene, its cousin UHMWPE, or if you're willing to go thick enough boron are good materials to make crew modules out of since they offer better radiation shielding which lets you save mass on reactor neutron reflectors and radiation shields.
Also keep on tinkering, thinking up new designs and crazy ideas is all apart of the fun.
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Post by AdmiralObvious on Nov 24, 2018 3:45:55 GMT
My general armor scheme is similar to the above. I tend to use Aluminum or Tin instead of Magnesium, since I don't like the idea of it reacting to what it's being shot at by (though I don't think anyone shoots lithium or ice our of cannons these days).
I also add a very small layer of something "loose" behind the VCS layer in the off chance the armor does spall a bit, which can happen with hypervelocity guns, or conventional guns. I find a little bit of Para Aramid or spider silk can help a lot if you can afford the cost. You can usually get away with just armoring the nosecone too if price really is an issue.
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Post by airc777 on Nov 24, 2018 10:51:45 GMT
Yeah I know. I was trying to stop needle railguns specifically. My normal armor profile is enough to stop solid projectile railguns at velocities above 100 km/s and cylic rates of 30hz for several minutes. My problem was stopping needles, they just ignore 1 meter of graphite aerogel. My usual armor profile is something like 5mm amorphous carbon (I don't like nuke flashes removing my entire whipple shield), then 1 meter graphite aerogel, then 1 to 2 cm of nitrile rubber to stop lasers, then 1 to 2 cm of boron filament. Which is plenty to stop reasonably sized solid projectile railguns for minutes, but it does absolutely nothing for stopping needles. Now I'm toying around with having an additional layer of vanadium chromium steel of somewhere between 2cm and 10cm between the graphite aerogel and the nitrile rubber, in addition to having 2 to 3 cm thick vanadium chromium steel crew modules instead of 1cm calcium crew modules. My survivability is now several seconds instead of immediate loss.
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Post by newageofpower on Nov 24, 2018 19:00:10 GMT
Consider changing your turret placements. They provide unsloped ideal 90 degree impact surfaces for incoming fire. IIRC there was a way to create an armor bulge and hide the turret behind the bulge. There's also a glitch where you can emplace the turrets inside the armor nosecone and have the turrets stick out through the armor, lol.
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Post by airc777 on Nov 24, 2018 19:55:08 GMT
Consider changing your turret placements. They provide unsloped ideal 90 degree impact surfaces for incoming fire. IIRC there was a way to create an armor bulge and hide the turret behind the bulge. There's also a glitch where you can emplace the turrets inside the armor nosecone and have the turrets stick out through the armor, lol. Mind if I see an example picture? My current solution is having 30cm vanadium chromium steel turret armor, and it appears to work but it's not the most mass efficient thing so if I could make it lighter that'd be great.
I'm having trouble picturing the described armor bulge, because the vcs layer which would protect the turrets from the intended projectile is under 1 meter of aerogel. The turrets are barely over 2 meters across, thanks to osmium momentum wheels, if the armor protruded enough for the vcs layer to protect the base of the turret I think it would obstruct the forward firing arch. I kind of like having the guns being able to angle down 4 degrees passed 0 over the frontal arch, so I guess I'd have to build some sort of additional sloped vcs ring over top of the existing armor?
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Post by AdmiralObvious on Nov 24, 2018 20:12:18 GMT
Consider changing your turret placements. They provide unsloped ideal 90 degree impact surfaces for incoming fire. IIRC there was a way to create an armor bulge and hide the turret behind the bulge. There's also a glitch where you can emplace the turrets inside the armor nosecone and have the turrets stick out through the armor, lol. Mind if I see an example picture? My current solution is having 30cm vanadium chromium steel turret armor, and it appears to work but it's not the most mass efficient thing so if I could make it lighter that'd be great.
I'm having trouble picturing the described armor bulge, because the vcs layer which would protect the turrets from the intended projectile is under 1 meter of aerogel. The turrets are barely over 2 meters across, thanks to osmium momentum wheels, if the armor protruded enough for the vcs layer to protect the base of the turret I think it would obstruct the forward firing arch. I kind of like having the guns being able to angle down 4 degrees passed 0 over the frontal arch, so I guess I'd have to build some sort of additional sloped vcs ring over top of the existing armor?
It's quite a lot harder to cheese the armor to do what it did before. Have you tried using Boron Fiber instead of VCS? It's much lighter than VCS, and is comparably as strong. |
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Post by airc777 on Nov 24, 2018 20:56:05 GMT
Mind if I see an example picture? My current solution is having 30cm vanadium chromium steel turret armor, and it appears to work but it's not the most mass efficient thing so if I could make it lighter that'd be great.
I'm having trouble picturing the described armor bulge, because the vcs layer which would protect the turrets from the intended projectile is under 1 meter of aerogel. The turrets are barely over 2 meters across, thanks to osmium momentum wheels, if the armor protruded enough for the vcs layer to protect the base of the turret I think it would obstruct the forward firing arch. I kind of like having the guns being able to angle down 4 degrees passed 0 over the frontal arch, so I guess I'd have to build some sort of additional sloped vcs ring over top of the existing armor?
It's quite a lot harder to cheese the armor to do what it did before. Have you tried using Boron Fiber instead of VCS? It's much lighter than VCS, and is comparably as strong. Did a few quick tests and I feel like the answer is close enough that I would have to run a lot more tests. 66cm of boron filament appears to preform reasonably comparably to 30cm of vcs in the context of turret armor. But just increasing my boron filament spall liner layer did not help improve hull survivability as much as adding a vcs shock plate did. The projectile is platinum and small enough that it completely defeats whipple shields, so i feel like what i would need to stop it is as much reliant on density as it is strength. That's actually why I tried osmium first before i tried vcs, but i think osmium was just to brittle and it was spalling to badly. The vcs turrets being denser have a smaller profile, I feel like even if a little boron filament preforms better then a little vcs when you start adding armor mass eventually vcs will out preform boron filament just because it would result in a smaller profile. More testing to be done.
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